Pre-School department head Louise Roberts discusses the latest developments in her weekly blog, which saw the children embark on a series of challenging and fun activities to boost their learning.

This week the children spent considerable time discussing cold deserts.

They discovered where the Arctic and the Antarctic are by looking at a globe and looked at pictures to discover which animals live in the two fast areas.

We provided postcards for the children to decorate and write a message as if on a visit to a cold desert.

We used penguins to learn about positional language and size and they played penguin number rhymes to boost numeracy skills.

The children enjoyed investigating melting icebergs and looked at clothes to wear in icy conditions.

They were also encouraged to describe different ways to move at a variety of speeds and at different directions during physical activities.

During creative activities, the children created models of polar bears from white dough, made penguins from cardboard tubing and painted polar bears.

Each member of our Pre-School department was extremely enthused by the topic and they have all worked tremendously hard throughout the first half term of the academic year.

I would like to thank them all for working so hard, to my staff for their exceptional dedication and to family members for their continued support.